How Minerals Form

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Vocabulary

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solution:A mixture when one substance is dissolved in one another.
vein: A very narrow slab of a mineral that is sharply different from the surrounding mineral.

Outline

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Process That Forms Minerals

• Minerals can form from two different ways
  • Through crystallization of melted materials
  • crystallization in materials dissolved in water.

Minerals From Magma

• Minerals can form as hot magma cools inside the crust, or as lava hardens on the surface of the earth.
  • When these kind of liquids cool to a more solid state, they form crystals.
    • The size of the crystal depends on several important factors.
      • The rate at which the magma cools
      • the amount of gas the magma contains
      • The chemical composition of the magma.
  • Magma that cools closer to the surface cools much faster than magma that hardens very deep below the ground.
    • When there is more rapid cooling, there is no time for magma to form bigger crystals
    • Instead, smaller crystals form.

Minerals From Hot Water Solutions

• Sometimes the elements that forms a mineral dissolves in the very hot water.
  • The magma underneath us heated the water to a very very high temperature.
    • When the hot water solution cools, it becomes a mineral.

Minerals Formed by Evaporation

• Minerals also forms another way.
• Minerals can also form when solutions evaporate.
  • If you take a beaker and fill it with salt and water, the salt will dissolve a solution.
  • When the water dries, it will leave salt crystals on the bottom.
    • Minerals formed by Evaporation basically forms the same way.

Where Minerals are Found

• Earth's crust is made up mostly of lots of common rock-forming minerals combined with other rocks.
  • Less common and more scarce and rare minerals are not distributed evenly in the earth's crust.

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